Summer 2017 Newsletter

Hello everyone! In May the Executive Board, Program Chair and I visited the Double Tree by Hilton Hotel in Lawrence where the 2017 Annual KAM Conference will be held. I am very excited for this year’s conference! The renovations to the hotel are beautiful and the conference set-up will be very accommodating for our organization.

Linda Sibert and the program committee have been super busy creating a jam-packed session conference with some fun evening activities for everyone! Nominations are officially open for the annual awards and Executive Board. I encourage everyone to take a look at the criteria for all of these positions/awards and nominate someone if you know they are deserving.

I also encourage everyone to take a look at the committee members and responsibilities! There are a lot of vacant committee positions this year. Organizations, such as ours, strengthen and prosper from volunteers! Please consider filling a committee spot this year.

KAM has offered two courses over the last few months and we have one more scheduled before conference. Please take a look at the "Intro to QGIS" course online and get registered now.

I look forward to seeing you all in October! You will not want to miss this year’s conference, “Mapping in a Changing World”!

This class will provide a basic introduction to the popular QGIS Open Source GIS software. In this hands on workshop, we will look at adding in and styling data from popular formats including rasters, shapefiles, geodatabases, and CSV files. You’ll learn how to install plugins to perform various GIS processes similar to those found in ArcMap such as generating LiDAR contours, geocoding, clipping, merging, etc. Included will be adding in basemaps and printing maps to PDFs. Finally, we will look at other sources of tutorials available to further your QGIS education. If you have a laptop, please plan to bring it to the classroom pre-installed with QGIS; otherwise we may be able to provide one for your use.

This class will be held on Tuesday, August 8 from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm in the 2nd floor training room at 141 S Gordy St, El Dorado, KS 67042. Registration is $30 for members, and $70 for non-members. Snacks will be provided. Class will be limited to 15 participants.

ModelBuilder by Ken Wilkerson, GIS Edge: July 31-1 in Columbia, MO. Visit www.gisedge.com for more information.

Python for GIS by Ken Wilkerson, GIS Edge: August 2-4 in Columbia, MO. Visit www.gisedge.com for more information.

The Kansas County Appraisers Association will be offering a 4-day long American Cadastre course (see description here) presented by Rick Norejko from TEAM Consulting, in Garden City, KS on August 28-31, 2017. The cost of the course is $375. You can register on the KCAA website- http://www.kscaa.net/. The course would be suitable for other county officials and private appraisers so if you could help us out and distribute the information to others it would be appreciated!

Do you have exciting news to share with KAM? Maybe a wedding, birth or job change? Share with us!

Welcome Linda Sibert

Jay Guarneri informed the KAM Executive Board that he and his family would be moving out of the area therefore unfortunately he turned his resignation as Director. By KAM statues, the nomination committee nominates a member to fill that position and that nomination is then voted on by the Executive Board. Congratulations to Linda Sibert as the newest Director of KAM!